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May 14, 2010 in City
Over-the-top charity may be too extreme to be truly helpful
Eric Hebert’s former home, at 10512 Baldy Mountain Road in Sandpoint was built by “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” in 2005. The bank took it back in October.
(Full-size photo)
If you want a handy metaphor for the economic ups and downs of the past five years, you could do worse than the house on Baldy Mountain Road outside Sandpoint.
The extravagant, customized home – one neighbor calls it “the castle” – was built in November 2005 by the stunt charity show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition,” relying on a massive volunteer effort to help a bachelor who had stepped in to raise his sister’s kids after she passed away. The bachelor proceeded to refinance the place twice, lose his job, try to start a business, default, leave town. The bank foreclosed on the castle in October. It sits on the market, price plummeting.
The demand for extreme ain’t what it used to be. And in Sandpoint, the appetite for that particular brand of extreme seems to be down to nil.
“I am disappointed,” said Stan Hatch, a Sandpoint real estate agent and the man who coordinated volunteers and resources for the show back in 2005. “You can’t help but be disappointed.”
Hatch, like a lot of people, feels let down by Eric Hebert, the man who was given the home. He’s proud of the effort Sandpoint made to build it – on the show’s falsely pressurized deadline, in order to meet its gonzo fireworks-and-group- hugs dynamic – but he wonders whether the entertainment needs of the show overwhelm its supposedly charitable purpose.
“That house is not just first class, but way over the top,” he said. “If you could take that many resources and apply them over three, five, six families that need help …”
Hebert is believed to have returned to Montana with the kids, but my efforts to track him down were fruitless. He moved to Sandpoint in 2004 to take care of his sister’s twins. He has said he was shocked at the mobile home they were living in; he bought a place – essentially a roofed basement – and was trying to make it work when the TV show contacted him.
If you haven’t seen “Extreme Makeover,” it goes something like this: Family in need is sent away on a luxury vacation while the annoyingly peppy crew whips the locals into a volunteering frenzy. Businesses and residents donate labor and materials, work around the clock. The home is revealed to the lucky family with a background of cheering volunteers.
Cut to commercial.
Makes for great TV. But almost immediately, Hebert had trouble keeping up with the place. Taxes, utilities – turns out a free castle doesn’t come cheap.
“He told us at one point the heating bill was $300 a month,” said Terrie Collins, who lives next door to the place. “I think it was just built too big.”
In past interviews, Hebert said he refinanced against the home – first for $250,000, then for $382,500 – thinking he had a secure job working construction, but his employer went out of business. Eventually, he tried to sell the home, but by then – May 2008 – the housing market had gone from bubble to puddle.
He defaulted in January 2009, and apparently left town last June or so. The bank took it back in October. The list price for the home has gone from $529,000 to just over $300,000.
Hebert has drawn a lot of ire and invective, and some of it may be deserved. I always hate it, though, when people play the game of pick on the charity recipient – assessing their worthiness, analyzing their financial acumen, proclaiming their mistakes. The tenor of such criticism boils down to: They got what they deserved.
That simplifies the world – makes the fortunate feel virtuous, the selfish feel righteous – but the world is not simple. Plenty of people who are smart as hell about money but shady to the core are not getting what they deserve right now – they’re getting bonuses. Lots of people living in lousy homes, not sure where the next meal is coming from – are they getting what they deserve? Those kids Hebert is raising – are they?
I wondered if people who do the steady, day-to-day work of charity in Sandpoint had any bad feelings about the whole experience. I called Alice Wallace, executive director of the local food bank – and she put me straight about the true spirit of charity.
“I have always tried to have the attitude that different people want to donate to different things,” she said. And as for Hebert, “I don’t want to condemn him until I’ve walked in his shoes.”
A lot of people – especially in the online world of snark and self-superiority, and in the world of televised hit-and-run charity – might take a lesson from Wallace. True charity isn’t a one-time feel-good extravaganza, just as people in true need don’t need be lavished with luxury. What they’re lacking is not a mansion.
Shawn Vestal can be reached at (509) 459-5431 or shawnv@spokesman.com.
The draw of the unknowable 
Ninch on May 14 at 7:34 a.m.
This “extreme” story has been repeated many times. The recipients “refinance” and lose the home. Of course, I do wonder how they spent the refinance money since they initially owned the home free and clear. Maybe they should include a financial IQ test and education as part of the deal.
biker on May 14 at 8:25 a.m.
I have always thought that instead of giving one lottery winner a 100 million dollar prize, wouldn’t it be better for everyone if 100 one million dollar prizes were given away? More people would play and it’s one way to spread the wealth without raising taxes. Smaller winning amounts, or in this case, a more realistic home and property being built is still a huge life changing moment without the overstated opulence.
SugarShane on May 14 at 12:26 p.m.
The people that contributed did so for recognition and publicity, not out of the goodness of their hearts. I lived in Sandpoint in 96 and was on the frontpage of the Idaho Spokesman when my house burned down and we were left penniless and with nothing. The red cross gave us 200$ for clothes and the Senior center gave us some free clothes, end of help. We tried publically appealing for help to the community and got squat. When they rebuilt the place I was renting I asked to move back in and was told “your going to have to pass a credit check”. Thanks sandpoint property management, and all the fine citizens of Idaho and sandpoint, you try and pass yourselves off as a caring small town, but at your heart you are nothing but a cold red state.
zelda on May 14 at 1:44 p.m.
This isn’t the only Extreme Home that’s gone into foreclosure. The families in need would be better off with a housing grant and some financial counseling. Instead, their lives got worse. I really can’t fault the recipients. They get caught up in the exuberance concocted by the network and the sponsors. Bottom line — it’s a marketing and advertising vehicle and the family can’t afford the cost of ownership: taxes, utilities and maintenance. In many of the Extreme Home situations, the houses were built in the same neighborhoods so the family ends up with a house that’s worth 10 times (at least) what their neighbors are living in. The American Dream shouldn’t mean you get to live in a palace. It should mean you have a job that’s good enough to eat well, stay healthy, be safe and have enough left over to do some things that make you happy.